


Put to Rest

by Snickfic



Category: Scream (Movies)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Case Fic, Developing Relationship, F/F, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Ghosts, Horror Elements, Kissing, Mentions of past canon relationships, Post-Scream 3, Sharing a Bed, Trauma, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:42:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28302522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: When Sid goes along on Gale's ghost debunking trip, she's secretly hoping to meet a ghost of her own. Unfortunately, the ghosts she and Gale meet at Crimby Lodge aren't people she ever wanted to see again.
Relationships: Sidney Prescott/Gale Weathers
Comments: 16
Kudos: 17
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Put to Rest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ijemanja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ijemanja/gifts).



> Dear recip, I loved your letter and am so excited to get to write this for you! I really hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Additional content warnings: mentions of literally every canon relationship for either character, one line of homophobia, some milder-than-canon-typical violence, me being unfairly mean to Det. Mark Kincaid. This fic takes place about two years after Scream 3.
> 
> Undying thanks to Stripy, who brainstormed and cheered on this fic from the the very early stages and without whom it would not exist, and seinmit, who did a last-minute beta job in my hour of need. You guys are the best. <3

“And now I have to cancel our fucking honeymoon,” Gale said. 

Gale was flushed with wine and disappointment, and she was sitting on Sid’s deck, which should have been really freaking weird, except they were sort of friends now. At least, Sid and Gale and Dewey had all been friends together, but now Dewey was out of the picture—or out of Gale’s picture, anyway, although Sid really hoped to still see him sometimes on his own—so it was just Sid and Gale out on the wooden deck with a bottle of wine between them.

Also, Sid had helped Gale with the wine. That was probably mostly why it wasn’t weird. 

“It was going to be a new direction, Sidney. A new leaf. A new—whatever. I wasn’t going to have to get blood out of any more shoes. No more broken ribs from falling off stages. Nobody else trying to shoot me, because I am fucking tired of being shot at or threatened with a hunting knife, or—”

“Just ghosts,” Sid said, because she _had_ been following the monologue, more or less.

Gale rolled her eyes. Even slouched in a deck chair with smudged lipstick and wisps of hair flying free of her ponytail, she was model-gorgeous. No wonder she’d been on TV. “There aren’t actually ghosts, Sidney. That’s the whole point, they’re all a fraud. It’s called debunking. It’s a whole—a whole journalistic field. I was going to debunk.”

“At Crimby Lodge, on your honeymoon.”

“Yeah.” Gale looked down at her hand and pinched the part of her ring finger where the engagement ring had been. “Fucker,” she said softly. “I told him we couldn’t work.”

That was too sad for Sid to think about. She emptied the last of the bottle into her glass and tipped it back. When she set the glass on the table with a rattle, she found Gale eyeing her with a lot more awareness Sid thought she was capable of just then. “You never drink,” Gale said.

Of course Gale would choose now to notice something besides herself. Sid looked away. “Mark got weird.”

Gale’s eyebrows rose sharply. “Weird, like—”

“Not bad,” Sid hastened. “Not like—I just mean, I think he kind of got off on it, me being—me. I guess that makes sense. He’s a homicide detective, right? He liked dating a girl who kept beating the killers. I don’t know. Anyway, he’s not coming around anymore.”

“Fucker,” Gale said. There was a whole lot more venom in the word than when she’d been talking about Dewey. It was kind of comforting, actually. There were a lot of things in this world worse than having Gale Weathers on your side. Sid of all people should know. 

“I have another bottle in there,” Sid said, thumbing towards the house.

“God, yes.”

* * *

Here was one of the reasons Sid didn’t drink: her dreams got weird. Or like. Weirder.

 _Sidney, honey._

It was her mom, still wearing the nightgown. She always wore the nightgown. Sometimes it was drenched with crimson just like when Sid had found her. (That was the night Sid realized if there was enough of it, blood had a smell.) Sometimes she was only a silhouette, and Sid couldn’t see her features no matter how she tried, until she started to realize it was because that it wasn’t her mom at all.

_Sidney, it’s me._

Tonight the nightgown draped oddly. Then she took a step towards Sid, and Sid realized her mom was flat. Just a two-dimensional person, like a cardboard cutout except for how she could still blink and move and speak. 

_Sidney._

Along her arm, there was something straight and brass-colored. A rod? A hinge. On the other side a canvas strap, like on shipping crate.

 _Honey, please, look at me_.

_Mom?_

She stood on the threshold of the room. Holding Sid’s gaze, she took hold of the strap and swung herself open like a door. And inside her there were no intestines, no blood, nothing except—

“Jesus fuck,” Sid said, squinting against the late morning sun. Her head ached and her mouth tasted sour, and the revolver from under her pillow was in her hand, aimed at nothing. There was nothing. Her heart pounded in time to the throbbing in her head, but there wasn’t anything to be afraid of. “Fuck,” Sid repeated. She checked the safety—at least she’d gotten over taking that off when she woke unexpectedly—and slid the gun back under the pillow. Then she went in search of water, aspirin, and coffee, in that order.

Gale had taken the guest bed, and there was no sign of her yet. Sid took a mug of coffee out onto the deck. She didn’t think about her mother opening up like an anatomical model, nor the time her mom had peeled off her face and revealed some other woman Sid had never seen before, nor the time her mom had broken through the glass of the bay window in Sid’s living room.

There was a lot of Sid’s mom to not think about. Sucked that these days, none of it was even any of the parts where she was alive.

After awhile, Sid went back inside and got out her laptop. Most mornings she opened the document no one knew about yet, the one that kept growing a few words at a time. However, she also woke up earlier most mornings, without trying to shoot her bedroom door. Today she brought up Yahoo and typed _Crimby Lodge_ into the search.

The front page was devoted to photos of the converted hunting lodge, still plenty rustic-looking but now featuring not only indoor plumbing but a hot tub, a sauna, and a fully equipped gym available to all guests, per the site. It was set against rolling foothills among scenic evergreens. The site promised well-kept hiking trails and a mountain spring.

The ghosts were buried in the page about the lodge’s history. There were a couple of lines describing an incident in 1958 and another in 1986. Typical ghost story stuff: white wispy figures in the corner of someone’s eye, belongings moved around. The site promised that if Sid visited the lodge, she too might be visited by the unworldly. It all seemed pretty tame to Sid, easy to fake or just imagine. She could see why the lodge didn’t try very hard to sell it. Just a bit of extra favor, if scenery and hot tubs didn’t do it for you.

On a whim, Sid returned to Yahoo and tried _Crimby Lodge ghosts_.

A dozen likely-looking results immediately popped up, all amateur-looking ghost-hunting sites. It turned out the lodge had decided to leave out the woman in 1973 who hung herself from her ceiling fan after insisting her dead, abusive husband was terrorizing her—and a bunch of other staff and guests, too, supposedly. 

There were other, less violent incidents, too. They were mostly single encounters without any resolution to them, hard to make a story from on their own. There was one thing the sites all agreed on, though: Crimby Lodge didn’t seem to have just one ghost or two. In fact, it wasn’t clear that the lodge itself had any ghosts at all. In almost every sighting, the witness identified the ghost as someone they knew. 

Sid was still sitting at the kitchen table, staring absently out the window, when Gale eventually made her appearance. She’d tied her hair neatly back and put her face on, and there she was, Gale Weathers of Top Story once again, not an eyelash out of place. 

Or maybe not quite. With the kind of intensity she usually directed at hapless witnesses, she peered at Sid’s mug and said, “Is that coffee?”

Sid laughed and pointed her towards the coffeemaker. “Do you want something to eat? I can make eggs, or there’s bread for toast.”

“No, thanks,” Gale said, flashing Sid a too-bright smile. “Just let me caffeinate, and I’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

Yeah, there was the Gale that Sid usually saw. Fully armored. “I’ll go with you,” Sid said.

“What?” Gale said, startled.

“On your honeymoon. Or not your honeymoon, I guess. Your debunking trip. You don’t have to cancel. I’ll go with you.”

Gale regarded her suspiciously. “Why?”

Sid shrugged. “I could use a change of scenery. I looked up Crimby Lodge, and it looks pretty. The site said there’s hiking.” 

The face Gale made told Sid everything she needed to know about her chances of getting Gale out on a trail. Well, that was fine. It wasn’t like hiking was the primary appeal for Sid, either. “You could show me your journalist ways,” Sid said, coaxing. “Usually I’m too busy running from serial killers to pay attention to your, uh, professional expertise. Maybe I could even help.”

“You have an angle,” Gale said. She searched Sid’s face, and Sid met her gaze evenly. “All right, I can respect an angle,” Gale said at last. “As long as you aren’t trying to scoop me.”

“Cross my heart,” Sid said, and made the sign over her chest.

* * *

Crimby Lodge _was_ pretty. The photos hadn’t done it justice. It sat at the head of a valley between forested foothills that smelled sharp and fresh and green, and if Sid squinted between the trees, she caught glimpses of the white-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada stretching towards the sky.

Parts of the lodge itself were built of whole, brightly stained logs. These parts included the honeymoon suite, which Gale had been unable to exchange. “Great view, at least,” Sid said, peering out the picture window to the valley below. She stepped out onto the balcony to get another whiff of the fir trees, and the thought came to her, as shocking as the cool air in her lungs, that maybe she really _had_ needed a change in scenery. Maybe she’d been telling the truth.

“Very rustic,” Gale said tartly from behind her.

“Don’t they have ghosts in cities that you could investigate?” Sid asked, laughing. “Or debunk, excuse me.”

She didn’t expect the silence that followed. She glanced over her shoulder and found Gale scowling. “It was Dewey’s idea,” Gale said shortly. “I wanted a story, he wanted the great outdoors. This was the compromise.”

Sid opened her mouth to apologize, but Gale had already returned to unpacking her suitcase. “Right,” Sid said instead. “So, what does debunking involve?”

And that was how Sid accidentally volunteered for the job of camera person. Gale sat her down on the bedspread, which was printed with pinecones, and began showing her how to work the handheld digital camera. “No, like this,” she said impatiently. She shifted close enough that their knees touched so that she could explain the menus. Sid caught a whiff of fruity-scented shampoo. “And for god’s sake, don’t drop it. It’s the best one I brought.”

With that, Gale shooed Sid out of the room with instructions to practice.

Sid had done her research. Or rather, on the drive up she’d read Gale’s research, which was very thorough and included a meticulous timeline of purported ghostly incidents, each marked on a layout of the lodge. That map firmly in mind and video camera in hand, Sid went exploring. 

The room where the widow had hung herself had been entirely renovated, the walls on either side taken down and the whole thing opened into a games room with a pool table and a pinball machine in the corner. The current light fixture was clearly only a few years old. Sid tried the camera’s zoom function on the view out the window and stayed alert for weird noises or cold spots. She was disappointed.

She checked out the sauna, where a woman had reported seeing her dead sister in 1992. Now there was only a saggy elderly man with a towel around his hips, who scowled when he caught sight of the camera. Sid apologized and ducked quickly out again.

The results were the same wherever she went. The only noises were made by the living, the cold spots just drafts from open windows. The unexpected motion at the corner of her eye turned out to be a curtain. That was fine, Sid told herself. If there were no ghosts here, then maybe at least Gale would get her story—or her non-story. At least one of them would get what they wanted from Crimby Lodge.

* * *

Sid and Gale met back at the suite before dinner. “Anything?” Gale said, tipping her chin towards the camera.

Sid shook her head. “You?”

Gale’s handheld audio recorder sat to one sider of her and her notes on the other, spread out over the bedclothes. “Nothing. Most of the staff are seasonal, or they’ve only worked here a year or two, and nobody’s seen anything. Most of them haven’t even heard about any of the incidents. 

“That’s good, right? Isn’t that what you’re trying to prove? That there aren’t any ghosts?”

“I’m trying to prove the ghosts are fraudulent, which means I need sightings. ‘I looked for ghosts and didn’t see anything’ is not a story.” Gale heaved a sigh. “Look, I want to freshen up. Meet you downstairs in twenty?”

“Sure.”

Sid took the camera with her, just for a little extra practice. She kind of liked it, she was finding. Her short-lived theater major had been all about immediacy, the promise of visceral narrative experience unique to that very moment, unreproducible. At least, that had been the thesis of one of the essays she’d written before her second (third?) round of murder, at which point she’d decided she’d had enough unique and visceral experience to last anyone a lifetime. 

_Capturing_ the unique experiences was different, though. Did that count as journalism? Maybe this was part of what Gale liked about her job. Sid sat on wooden bench just outside the dining room, watching guests on her viewfinder as they walked past.

Then a long pair of legs in a short black skirt walked directly in front of her lens and stopped. “Having fun?” Gale asked, and Sid looked up.

Gale had dressed for dinner. Sid didn’t know why she’d expected any different. Gale’s hair was pulled up in an artful updo, revealing a string of sparkles dangling from each ear. The neckline and bodice of her cocktail dress hugged her breasts, and the hem came just low enough to be decent, leaving plenty of leg. Like, a lot of leg. “Wow,” Sid said.

“Well, I’d already bought it,” Gale said tartly, but there was a self-satisfied gleam in her eye. “I might as well wear it.” 

They walked into the dining room together. Sid caught a whiff of perfume that seemed to tease at her nose, never quite strong enough for her to place it. 

Dinner was pretty good. The food was decent, and there was something a little dazzling about Gale in this context, half her sharp-eyed attention on Sid and the other half on whatever story she was telling. Which story it was shifted by the minute; Gale had a lot of stories stocked, a lot of irons in the fire, of which the ghost debunking was only one. 

Then dinner was _great_ , because Gale tried interviewing the table next to theirs and got told off by a staff member for harassing other guests. “They could have known something,” Gale told Sid with a shrug, entirely unrepentant. 

After Sid stopped laughing, she said, “You’re good at what you do.”

Gale blinked at her. “Well, of course,” she said, but there was something uncertain about it.

It was Sid’s turn to shrug. “I’ve read parts of your book, and it was kind of, you know—bullshit?”

“Well, yeah,” Gale said. “That’s what people want. Truth is boring. Nobody wants that. You have to know what the truth is before you improve it, though, right?”

“Sure,” Sid said. 

She meant to leave it there. She and Gale were friends now, and they’d saved each other’s lives a couple of times. Sid had moved on. Her mouth opened anyway, and she said, “Some of what you wrote was pretty shitty. Stuff about my mom.”

Gale’s gaze shifted away from Sid’s, which was the closest to looking uncomfortable Sid had ever seen her. _Good_. Then she looked Sid square in the eye and said, “Some of it was true.”

Now it was Sid who looked away. She stared down at her elk steak—lodge specialty, limited quantities available. “Yeah.”

A painful silence followed. Then Gale said brightly, “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I stole this idiot’s car when I was chasing a witness?”

It was an absolutely transparent attempt. It worked. “You stole a car?” Sid said, incredulous.

“Well, he’d left the keys in the ignition. I don’t know what he expected to happen. I was doing him a favor, honestly. At least I gave it back.”

* * *

Sid had not given the sleeping arrangements a lot of thought. The honeymoon suite boasted a king size bed with more than enough room for the both of them. Gale wore a t-shirt and pajamas to bed, the least fancy thing Sid had ever seen her in. Sid wore boxers and a tank top. Still, it’d been a long time since Sid had shared a bed with someone. Gale dropped right off, but Sid lay there awhile in the dark, listening to the rise and fall of Gale’s breath. The mild floral scent of her bodywash drifted across the sheets to Sid. Gradually, Sid drifted away with it.

 _Sidney_. Tonight her mom was molting. Bits of skin and bits of nightgown fluttered to the ground as she approached.

 _It’s me, darling_ , she said. She reached up and tugged at her hair, and it was going to be that dream, _that_ one, except when she peeled her skin away it was still her face underneath. _Sidney?_

“What the fuck are you doing?” someone demanded.

Gale. It was Gale, and she was staring at Sid—or rather, at the gun in Sid’s hand. Sid slowly lowered it.

“Where did that come from? Did you just _have_ it?”

“Yeah,” Sid said, breathless. Her heart was racing. She slumped over her lap, because it was better than looking at Gale or trying to explain.

In a new tone, Gale said, “Did you see something?” She was on the story now, all business. 

Sid shook her head. “Bad dream.”

Gale was silent for a while. Sid’s pulse gradually slowed. “You shoot a lot of bad dreams?”

“It’s just a precaution. I’m gonna—um. I’m going to go get some air.” Sid slid the revolver back where it’d come from. It’d been habit; she hadn’t even thought about it. The toothbrush went in the toothbrush holder, and the gun went under the pillow. “Look, I’m sorry if I—just, sorry.” She pulled on the complimentary robe that hung in the wardrobe by the door and slipped from the room.

The lodge was quiet. No wonder: a wall clock said it was after 2am. Sid passed darkened community rooms and smiled at a janitor with a mop. Eventually she found herself in the lobby. The reception desk was dark, too, but in the neighboring lounge, there was a light on over the coffee urn. Sid reached for a mug.

“You sure about that?” said a voice that seemed familiar. Goosebumps rose on Sid’s arms. 

Billy Loomis stood by the window. His face was half in shadow, but she’d know that smirk anywhere as long as she lived.

“It’s gonna keep you up all night,” Billy said. He shifted sideways. There was something not quite solid about him, like the parts of him in shadow might not exist. It made sense, said a rational part of Sid’s brain, since he’d been dead six years. Or maybe that wasn’t rational at all. “Forget your liquor, you can’t even hold your caffeine.”

“Come into the light,” Sid said.

She didn’t know what she expected. Stab wounds, the gunshot to the head that she’d personally delivered. But when he stepped out of the shadows, he just looked like himself: t-shirt and jeans, that haircut that’d been so cute in 1996 and looked a little silly now. “Happy?” he said.

“Why are you here?” Sid’s voice shook. “I don’t—I’m _over_ this. I don’t give a shit about you, Billy. _Where’s my mom_?”

Billy’s gaze drifted past her.

“Billy!”

Billy’s smile grew wider, his eyes lighting with that glee she’d seen at the end. “Nice seeing you, Sid.” He strolled past her, towards the doorway. By the time she’d spun around to follow, he was gone, of course. He was gone.

* * *

“Gale!” Sid called softly. She knocked again. She’d forgotten her room key when she’d made her escape earlier. 

At last the door swung open. Gale was on the other side, looking ready to commit some murder of her own. “My god, Sidney—”

Sid slipped inside. Only then did she realize she’d brought the coffee mug up from the lounge, still clean. She set it on the desk. “I saw Billy Loomis.”

“What?”

“I saw the ghost of Billy Loomis in the lounge downstairs, by the coffee urn.”

Gale’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. He talked to me and everything.”

“What did he say?”

“Uh, he told me not to drink the coffee.”

Gale gave her a long, sharp look. She reached past Sid for a matching robe. “Show me.”

Five minutes later, armed with the video camera this time, they stood in the shadowed lounge. Now that Sid wasn’t literally seeing a ghost from her past, she had a chance to take the place in a little more. There was nothing about it that looked very haunted, especially once Gale flipped the light switch. The carpet was new; the furniture looked like it was from the 70s, but probably re-upholstered. Wow, someone had chosen that particular shade of burnt orange _twice_.

There was no sign of Billy. Gale had Sid inspect every corner of the room anyway, camera in hand, while Gale muttered into her audio recorder. When they’d already gone over the whole room, someone coughed in the doorway. They both flinched.

It was the janitor, now with vacuum. He eyed them both dubiously.

“We thought we heard something,” Sid said.

“Gale Weathers,” Gale said, approaching him. She held out her recorder like a mic. “You might have seen me on Top Story. We’ve investigating a possible haunting. Have _you_ seen any unusual activity this evening?”

The janitor peered down at Gale’s bedroom slippers, then back up to her face. His eyebrows rose.

Gale glared back, deeply unimpressed. Before they could settle into a real stare-off, Sid said, “We’ll get out of your way, mister, but maybe we’ll see you tomorrow.” She gave him a smile, tucked her hand into Gale’s elbow, and tugged. Somewhat to her surprise, Gale followed.

Of course, once they got into the hallway, Gale wanted to check out the entire lodge for more signs of Billy. Along the way, she recorded Sid’s eyewitness account. It didn’t take long; Sid didn’t have much to tell. “Did he threaten you or try to hurt you?”

“Not really,” Sid said. “He kind of just—made fun of me, a little. Anyway, none of the other accounts reported people being hurt by ghosts. I don’t—I don’t think he could have touched me, even if he wanted to.” At least, she was firmly choosing to believe that until she had evidence otherwise.

“And it was definitely him,” Gale said.

“Look, this wasn’t just a shadow in a mirror or something. He was _right_ there. It was Billy.”

Together they walked the whole length of the lodge, both upstairs and down. No Billy. Sid took video of it all, including of Gale trying the locked gym door ( _Hours: 6am-10pm_ ) and sneaking through the kitchen. “It’s not like he was hiding,” Sid said at last. “If he wants to see me, I think he can find me.” It was not a comforting thought. 

“Fuck, all right,” Gale said, and headed back for their room.

By the time Sid crawled back under the covers, she’d been awake for hours. It was only as she closed her eyes, head-achy with exhaustion, that she remembered what had woken her in the first place. Which was worse: Billy when she was awake, or her mom in her dreams? 

Sid fell asleep before she could decide.

* * *

The sun was high when Sid struggled awake again. It had to be almost noon. Sid sat up and scrubbed at her eyes. Abruptly her memories of the night before returned to her. She’d seen Billy Loomis. 

Before that thought could really sink in, Gale bustled out of the bathroom, looking really sharp in her dark slacks and filmy top. “Oh good, you’re awake. Hurry up and get dressed. They just started serving lunch downstairs.” When Sid didn’t immediately move, Gale lifted her eyebrows. “Well?”

Sid considered strangling Gale with her scarf. “Coming,” she said, and crawled out of bed.

Over breakfast/lunch, Gale listed her top interview priorities for the day. She seemed newly energized by the night’s activities. “But I thought you wanted to prove ghosts _weren’t_ real,” Sid said. “Isn’t this kind of the opposite?”

“Well, you might have been mistaken.”

“He was right there, Gale.”

Gale took a sharp breath through her nose and didn’t dignify that with comment.

“So what’s the plan for today?” Sid asked.

The plan was more interviews: guests this time, rather than staff. Gale wanted Sid on hand to take footage of anyone who confessed to seeing anything that might have been a ghost. Some of the guests recognized Gale, and Sid shifted between amusement and impatience as Gale preened through each of those interviews. 

At the end of it, they had report of zero additional ghostly encounters, and Sid could tell Gale was starting to doubt Sid’s story. 

“Maybe it’s only in the lounge,” Sid suggested, although none of the other reports mentioned the lounge. The space wasn’t even that old; the woman at the front desk reported that it was part of a new addition built in the mid-seventies. “Maybe it’s only at that time of night. Or maybe just not that many people have ghosts.”

Gale gave her a sharp look.

“I mean, if anyone was going to have a ghost or two, it’d be me, right?” Sid said. 

“Fuck,” Gale said. It sounded more like defeat than surprise. She slumped back against the sofa. They were in one of the community rooms with windows looking out into the woods. Every so often a knit cap passed by just barely in view, belonging to someone starting up the hiking trail.

“Do you know why I let you come?” Gale said.

That wasn’t where Sid had expected this to go. “Cost-splitting?”

Gale rolled her eyes. “Because you’re Sidney Prescott. You were going to be my trump card. You’re right, if anyone was haunted, it’d be you! And when you weren’t, presto. Obviously not haunted.”

Sid laughed. She couldn’t even be mad. “It figures.”

“Hey, coming along was your idea—”

“I know! I know. What if I’d said I didn’t want to be your trump card? If I didn’t want to feature in another true crime installment, and I told you to leave me out of it, what then?”

Gale grimaced. “I’d ask you to reconsider. And it’s not true crime. Fraud is a whole different genre. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.”

“Well, proving that ghosts exist sounds more exciting than not, anyway, doesn’t it?”

In her most withering tone, Gale said, “Serious journalists don’t investigate ghosts, Sidney. Ghosts are for hacks.”

Sid found herself laughing again—at Gale, first, but then at herself, and finally at the whole situation. After a moment she managed to pull herself together, but she could still feel that incredulous humor tight in her chest, waiting to escape again.

Gale was looking at her funny now.

“It’s just,” Sid said, choking back another laugh, “you brought me here so I wouldn’t see a ghost, and I came so I would.”

“What?”

“My mom,” Sid said, abruptly sober again. “I—I dream about her a lot. Weird dreams, like last night. I thought—everything said that people bring their own ghosts here. I thought maybe I could see her.”

For the second time in twenty-four hours, Gale looked uncomfortable. Would wonders never cease.

“And instead, who shows up but my psycho-murderer ex-boyfriend, as if I haven’t had three other people try to kill me since then. Do you hear me, Billy?” Sid asked, raising her voice. “You’re not special. I’m _over_ you, so fuck off.”

Sid half-expected a cold draft to blow across the back of her neck after that. Apparently she wasn’t in that kind of ghost story, because the autumn sun kept shining past the window, and nothing else happened at all. 

Suddenly Sid had had it with haunted lodges, with spirits of every kind, real or dreamed of—with all of it. “I’m going for a walk on the trail before dinner. You want to come?”

She wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised when Gale said yes.

* * *

It was beautiful. Sid wasn’t all that woodsy, but the trail was well maintained, and she could appreciate the fresh smell of fir trees as much as the next person. She and Gale both cooed over a chipmunk that sat up on an old stump, considering them very seriously. It was tiny. Sid could have held it in her palm.

They came to a fork. The sign promised a long hike and a natural spring in one direction or short hike with a view in the other. They chose the view. Fifteen minutes later, as Gale was grumbling in her hoodie and sensible tennis shoes—she _did_ have some of those, it turned out—the trail broke out of the dense, shady canopy of the woods and into a clearing. Here was the promised view. The metal roof of the lodge was just visible through the trees, and beyond it Sid could see the whole valley stretching out below. 

She turned to give Gale a hand up the last big step. Gale’s palm was warm and dry against hers. She joined Sid and took in the same view, hands on her hips. “Dewey would have dragged me up here, too,” she said. There was an odd note in her voice Sid couldn’t identify. Not sad, she didn’t think. When she turned, she found Gale looking back, her gaze heavy and oddly serious. Something expectant hung in the air between, something Sid couldn’t see the shape of at all—

“Hi, Gale.”

Sid turned. Someone stood just beneath the shadow of the trees, and the voice was familiar, though she couldn’t place it.

Gale gasped. “You,” she said, with surprising venom.

The figure shifted, catching a ray of sunlight filtering down through the trees. It was Debbie Loomis. “What are _you_ doing here?” Sid asked.

Debbie Loomis glanced Sid’s way, rolled her eyes, and took another step into the clearing. “You just had to stick your nose in,” she told Gale. 

“Get the fuck away from me,” Gale spit.

“My god, do you ever stop talking,” Debbie said. She was in full sunlight now, and she didn’t look quite as real as Gale did, like maybe some of the light was passing through, but she still looked plenty real enough. “Do you have any idea how obnoxious you are?” She was getting closer. A shadow shifted, and suddenly there was a gun in her hand. It looked pretty solid, too. “Do you know what it was like, having to pretend I was impressed, just so I could flatter a few facts out of you?”

Gale drew herself up taller. “The fuck you did.”

“Oh, excuse me, the great investigative journalist Gale Weathers would never let anything _leak_.” Debbie was five feet away now, bathed in light, awash in it. The only shadow she made was the one down the barrel of that gun, pointed at Gale’s chest. “Drip, drip, drip.” Her eyebrows bounced on each word.

“You’re dead,” Gale said, her voice sharp and full of fear that Sid hadn’t heard in years. She could have happily gone another couple of years without hearing again. Gale took a step back. “Fuck off.”

“Care to join me, Gale?” Debbie advanced, grinning, baring all her white, white teeth. “Go on, Mickey.”

“What?” Gale said. She backed up again.

Another figure moved in the shadows, off to their right. Before Sid could move, a shot rang out from that direction, explosively loud, earsplittingly close, and Gale slid off the edge of the bluff.

“Gale!” Sid said. She glanced back to see Debbie Loomis coolly watching her, but she’d lowered the gun, and that was all Sid cared about. She scrambled down a narrow path down between the boulders, heart racing. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the bright yellow of Gale’s hoodie. 

Gale was already struggling to sit up. She’d fallen maybe five feet and then rolled another five or so, fetching up on a level spot just downhill of the bluff. Sid knelt at her side and looked for blood. “Are you hurt?” Was she _shot_? Could ghosts do that?

Gale didn’t answer. Sid followed her gaze upward. Two figures stood together on the bluff above, the sun shining through them. Then she blinked, and they were gone.

“Fuckers,” Gale said. Her voice cracked.

Sid went back to looking her over. Gale had dirt in her hair and several bright scratches across one arm, welling droplets of blood. “Did you sprain anything?” Sid asked. “Hit your head?”

“I don’t—I don’t think so.” Gale brushed forest debris off herself. “Fuck. No, get off me, I’m fine. Just give me a minute.”

Sid sat back and let Gale put herself together. Soon Gale was pushing to her feet. Sid grabbed her hand to steady her, and Gale squeezed it, hard. “Come on,” Sid said. “Let’s go back to the lodge. I think we can get back to the trail if we go around this way.”

It wasn’t until they’d hit the dirt path again that Gale let go of her. “Have I mentioned I _hate_ hiking?”

“I guessed,” Sid said.

* * *

Gale didn’t say another word on the way back. When Sid stopped at the reception desk for a first-aid kit, Gale stood nearby, holding her arms and scowling at everyone who dared look her way. “Come on,” Sid said. “Let’s get you fixed up.” She offered Gale a smile. Gale huffed, unimpressed.

When they got to the room, Gale reached for the kit. “I can do it.”

“That’s probably true. Or, I can do it.” Sid met Gale’s gaze steadily until Gale rolled her eyes began taking off her sweatshirt. Success

Then Gale winced. “Ow. Fuck, can you—?”

Sid slowly helped her out of her shirt. The trouble seemed to be her wrist. “Maybe a small sprain,” Gale admitted.

“Hold on,” Sid said. She put the first aid kit down and headed for the door.

A few minutes later, she came back with ice. Gale was right where she’d left her, sitting on the bed in her tank top, one hand cradled in the other. She was staring out the window with an expression Sid didn’t like at all. Sid carefully wrapped a washcloth around the wrist and then let Gale arrange the bag of ice on top of it. Sid got out the hydrogen pyroxide, antibiotic cream, and Band-Aids. She wiped the scrapes clean with a wet washcloth and then bandaged them one by one.

After a while, Gale said, “You look like you know your way around that stuff.”

Sid worked her way up the worst scrape, halfway up the outside of Gale’s forearm. “I took a first aid course in college. You know, after Mrs. Loomis and everything. I figured it might come in handy, the way my life was going.”

“And hey, what do you know,” Gale said, sounding almost like herself.

“Gale, I’m really sorry,” Sid said. Bizarrely, she felt a little shaky now, though her hands had been steady all through the disinfecting and bandaging. “I shouldn’t have come. I just—I wanted to see my mom, that’s all. I didn’t think any of this would happen.”

“I started going to a shooting range,” Gale said, apropos of nothing. “After Woodsboro. The next time, I was going to know what the fucking safety was.”

“And you did,” Sid said, not sure where this was going. “You shot Mickey. No hesitation.”

“We shot him together.”

“Bonding activity,” Sid said brightly.

Gale laughed—a shocked, painful sort of sound, but the best thing Sid had heard in a while. “Fuck, I think maybe I bruised some ribs, too.” She caught the look on Sid’s face and shook her head sharply. “No, you don’t get to apologize. I brought you here. I was maybe going to use you, a little.”

“A little,” Sid agreed, pinching the air.

Gale grimaced. “What I’m saying is, murderous bastards are not your fault. Not even ones from the beyond.”

“Thanks,” Sid said softly. 

For no reason, she reached out and grabbed Gale’s uninjured hand. Gale squeezed back. She had a hell of a grip and very soft skin. Lots of moisturizer, probably. Her palm was warm against Sid’s, and she was fine, she was alive. Maybe that’s all that Sid was feeling, just _thank god you’re alive._ Just an adrenaline crash and the touch of another person.

When Sid looked up, Gale was looking back. “Sidney,” Gale said, but she didn’t seem to know where to go from there.

Sid saved her the trouble of figuring it out. She leaned up and kissed her.

For a moment everything was still: Sid’s mouth against Gale’s, Gale still gripping her hand. Then Gale sucked in a breath, and Sid shifted backwards, flushing hot. Gale was tugging her hand free. Sid said, “Uh, sorry if that was—sorry—”

Before she could finish, Gale slid her palm up Sid’s jaw. She drew Sid back in and brought their lips together. She tasted of lipstick; of course she did. Sid stroked Gale’s arm—the unscraped one—and tongued across her lips, and something lit in Sid’s gut, something she hadn’t felt in so long she almost didn’t recognize it. 

She pulled back. Gale looked as shaken as she felt. “Huh,” Gale said.

“Yeah.” Sid’s heart was racing like it had on the cliff.

“I think—” Gale began, and paused. “I think we should get dinner.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Gale gave her a searching look, and then she ducked in and kissed Sid again: a brief kiss, but one with intent. She curled her fingers around Sid’s and gave them one last squeeze before she let go.

* * *

There was no dressing for dinner this time, or not much. Sid helped Gale into a dress jacket that went over the tank top and jeans she was already wearing. Sid didn’t try to touch her any more than she would have the day before, but she didn’t try to touch her _less_ , either. Then she looked up, found Gale watching her, and deliberately brushed her thumb over the inside of Gale’s good wrist.

Gale inhaled sharply, and Sid let go and stepped back. “Looking good,” she said.

“Of course,” Gale said, but that had a new weight to it, too: Sid looking, and Gale letting her look. 

Leaving the room felt like leaving a cocoon, like Sid was different than when she’d gone in. It was a shock to get to the bottom of the stairs and see the lounge. Abruptly all the nervy excitement in Sid’s gut chilled, leaving just plain nerves. “So what are we going to do?” she said. “About—?” She nodded towards the perennial coffee urn. 

_You can’t even hold your caffeine._

“I’m not thinking about that on an empty stomach,” Gale said.

The memory of the lounge’s threatening shadows followed Sid into the dining room. It was early, so they had the place mostly to themselves. There were a lot of empty, shadowed corners. Sid told herself to pull herself together. Then Gale dropped her fork, and they both flinched. 

“They don’t seem to follow any rules,” Gale complained, breaking the tense silence. “If they can show up on a hiking trail in broad daylight…”

“Yeah,” Sid said. 

Sid spent half the meal feeling prickles along her back, thinking someone was looking at her. That didn’t stop her from spending the other half watching Gale’s mouth. She licked across her own lips, searching for a lingering hint of Gale’s lipstick. Sometimes, she caught Gale looking back. 

Sid couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted someone. Mark Kincaid, maybe, but that had never felt like this. It was maybe another reason the relationship had fizzled to nothing, Mark’s survivor fetish aside. It’d been years since Sid had felt her skin heat just from looking at another person.

And that person was _Gale Weathers_. Sid never saw that coming. It was a good thing the Sidney of 1996 couldn’t see her now. Sid let that thought swim around in her head for a few moments, and then she let it go. That girl in 1996 had been through a lot, but she didn’t know everything yet.

But eventually, all her half-formed imaginings gave way to the continued unease. Sid put aside her empty wine glass—just one glass, Gale had coaxed, and somehow Sid hadn’t been able to resist her—and said, “Let’s go back to the room.” It felt a little like surrender. Sid didn’t fucking care. 

Upstairs, all business, Gale pulled a notebook from her handbag and flipped it open to a new page. “So, ghosts. What do we know?”

It was, it turned out, more an exercise in listing what they didn’t know.

* * *

Question: Why were there ghosts at Crimby Lodge? Why that location, specifically?

“One of the ghost-hunting sites thought it was related to the oldest reported incident,” Sid said. Gale’s eyebrows rose. Hey, Sid had done the research, too. “You know, the one with the man who died here, when it was still an actual hunting lodge? Something about ‘persistent energies’?”

“Was that the website where the cursor was a little cartoon ghost?”

“I—think so?”

“Hmm.”

* * *

Question: Could the ghosts hurt anyone?

Gale held up her bandaged wrist. “Ow.”

“You kind of did that to yourself, though,” Sid pointed out. “I mean, Mrs. Loomis—or the ghost of Mrs. Loomis, whatever—she never touched you, right?”

“No,” Gale said sullenly. “But I don’t care how see-through she is, I’m not taking my chances with any spectral bullets. That gun looked real enough.”

“Yeah,” Sid said. She hadn’t had time for fear then, but now it tightened in her chest just remembering that gun drawn on Gale—her _friend_ Gale, whatever else was going on between them.

* * *

Question: Should Gale and Sid go home?

“Just like that?” Gale said.

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt. More hurt,” Sid amended. “What about your story, though?”

“Well, I think we’ve agreed that this isn’t a case of fraud, and I’m not ruining my reputation for ghosts, so I don’t _have_ a story anymore.”

“You don’t want to know just to know? Why they’re here, what this place is?”

“What, the pure, unsullied pursuit of knowledge? Who do I look like, Carl Sagan?” Before Sid could call bullshit on that—she was pretty sure being a journalist required at least _some_ natural curiosity—Gale added, “You haven’t gotten what you came for, though.”

“My mom,” Sidney said. Gale nodded. There was sympathy in her eyes—not pity, because Gale didn’t do pity, a quality about her Sid had come to appreciate. Gale didn’t do sympathy very often either, though. Sid didn’t know how to deal with receiving it now. “It seems stupid to hang around just—just for that. I’d rather not run through the entire murder highlights reel of my life. They were bad enough the first time, you know?”

Gale snorted her agreement.

“But they’re not going to follow us, right? Whatever it is here that lets people cross the veil or whatever, it’s just here. We could go home tomorrow and never worry about any of this again.”

“It’s just so damn unsatisfying,” Gale said. “Running away like that.”

“It’s not a tactic that’s ever really worked for me,” Sid admitted.

“God, our lives are fucked.” Gale said, shaking her head. “Well, yours more than mine.”

“Thanks,” Sid said drily.

“I mean, ‘ _This_ time when I had a serial killer trying to murder me, I tried _that_.’”

“Yeah. And nobody gets it, you know? I mean you, me, Dewey—” Sid paused, wondering if she’d hit a sore spot, but Gale only nodded along. “There are support groups for people who’ve witnessed a murder, or who’ve been in situations like that. I learned about them when I was working with the social services agency. But even then, I don’t know. It sounds nuts, trying to explain it.” That was part of what the book was about, really. If she could explain it to other people, maybe it’d make sense to her. 

She wasn’t ready to tell Gale about that yet, though. “I guess what I’m saying is, I appreciate the people I don’t have to explain it to.”

“Right,” Gale said. “Of course.” There was a funny note in her voice; there was something fragile in her expression that Sid hadn’t ever seen there before. 

Gale Weathers talked a big game about not caring if people liked her, but maybe she had some exceptions. Maybe Sid was one of them. 

Sid pushed the abandoned notebook aside and shifted closer. This time it wasn’t a surprise to either of them when Sid leaned in. The pause for dinner had been useful; it had given Sid time to get used to the idea. Now as she pressed her mouth to Gale’s, she could pay attention to other things than just the fact that it was happening. This close, she could appreciate the warmth of Gale’s skin under her hand. She caught hints of Gale’s bodywash and of Gale’s own earthy, bodily scent underneath it. Sid dared to press her palm to Gale’s thigh and was rewarded with the sharp intake of Gale’s breath.

Gale broke the kiss, chuckling softly. “You know, it’s been a long time since I’ve done this.”

“Well,” Sid said, deadpan, “that explains a lot about why you and Dewey didn’t work out.”

Gale shoved at Sid’s shoulder, laughing. “Fuck off. That’s not what I meant. Just—” She gestured between them.

“Me, too. Not since college.”

Saying even that much out loud seemed to charge the air between them with new meaning. Sid wasn’t talking about just making out. She didn’t think Gale was either. She brushed her hand along Gale’s thigh, over her pants leg. “You’re injured,” she said cautiously.

“I’m not _that_ injured,” Gale said. “But if you help me get out of these clothes, we can see what kind of bruises I have.”

“Not yet,” Sid said. She only half believed they were here at all, doing this, and she didn’t want to rush. Maybe this was a one-time thing, the product of isolation and adrenaline and sharing a bed in the freaking honeymoon suite, but all the more reason to take their time. She offered Gale a smile and edged closer until there were just inches between them, and she caught Gale’s mouth again.

Sid let her hands start to wander. She stroked Gale’s side beneath the jacket, and then slid her hand under the hem of tank top. The warmth of Gale’s skin against her palm felt like a gift. Gale slipped her tongue into Sid’s mouth, and Sid gasped like she was a teenager again. Never mind doing it with a woman; Sid hadn’t made out like this with _anyone_ in a really long time. 

Maybe not since Derek, but that was too depressing to think about on several levels. 

Gale cupped Sid’s neck and brushed her thumb along the side of it. “At least get this off,” she murmured, tugging on Sid’s sweatshirt.

“I can do that,” Sid said, feeling soft and weirdly tender, warmed by the glass of wine and how close Gale was. She shifted back and pulled the sweatshirt over her head. 

Gale started to get handsy, too. She kept the tweaked wrist well away from the action, but with the other hand she stroked along Sid’s ribs, thumbed across the nape of her neck, traced the curve of her ear. Everywhere she touched Sid seemed to tingle. Sid’s whole body felt hot with awareness, from the surface of her skin all the way down into her lungs and her throat and her gut.

Kissing wasn’t enough anymore. Sid slid Gale’s jacket off her shoulders. “Can I—?”

“Go for it,” Gale said.

It wasn’t very sexy undressing, because Sid had to be careful of Gale’s wrist. They extricated her from the jacket, and Sid lifted Gale’s tank top over her raised arms. 

Of course Gale’s bra was stylish. She’d spent half the day slumming it in a tank top and hoodie, and underneath all of it she was wearing bright yellow trimmed across the top with lace. Also, she had pretty great boobs.

“What?” Gale said suspiciously. 

Sid realized she was smiling. “It suits you,” she said. She ducked in and pressed a kiss to that place where Gale’s neck met her shoulder. Gale sucked in a breath. That was what Sid liked to hear. She smirked against Gale’s neck.

They scrambled out of the rest of their clothes piece by piece. Sid made a little bit of a show of taking off her t-shirt, lifting her arms to show off her black and strictly functional bra. From the quirk of Gale’s mouth, the move didn’t go unappreciated. “Yeah, we both know you’re fucking adorable,” Gale said, but her smile took out all the sting, leaving Sid feeling flushed and pleased.

They made it back to the bed in just their underwear. Gale let Sid slip the clasp on her cheerful yellow bra, and underneath was just—Gale. Clear creamy skin that was marked red in places from the day’s adventures, full breasts, and no armor left. Sid tossed the bra aside and kissed Gale’s collar bone, then her breast at the very top of the swell. Gale was fiddling with Sid’s bra, and soon enough that got thrown aside, too. Then Gale was pushing Sid down onto her back and settling on top of her, a knee planted between Sid’s legs and a hand tangled in her hair. Gale kissed Sid like she had something to prove. She was breathing just as hard as Sid was.

Sid got her hand on Gale’s breast at last, a warm, satisfying weight against her palm. She rolled the nipple between her fingers. Gale responded by putting a little bit of teeth in her kiss, which Sid took for approval. 

And then, like a little miracle, Sid felt Gale’s hand dipping down between her thighs and brushing against her panties, right over her feverish, throbbing clit. Her touch was cool, leaving Sid tingling. Sid groaned and opened her legs. Gale tugged the cotton fabric aside and stroked along Sid’s clit, all the way down until she reached Sid’s pussy. She stroked a circuit around the opening and then stopped altogether.

“Oh come on,” Sid said. 

“Fine,” Gale said, grinning. She slipped a single finger in and out again, like a fucking tease. Sid complained about that, too. Gale laughed at her and just kept brushing over Sid’s clit with the pad of her thumb. It was maddening. Sid rolled her hips up against Gale’s hand, and finally, still laughing, Gale gave her two fingers. “I got you all worked up,” Gale said, pulling out and lifting her fingers to the light: wet-looking and slick. 

“Put them back,” Sid demanded, half in frustration and half just to see Gale grin again. Sid was lighting up all over now, but in the back of her mind was the conviction that she wanted to see Gale laugh like that more often.

Gale did what she asked, though. She pressed into Sid again, and Sid clenched around her fingers. “Oh, fuck,” Sid gasped. “Oh, _fuck_.” Sid rolled her hips towards the pressure, hungry for more of it. 

Gale got her off like that. She came clenching around Gale’s fingers, groaning into Gale’s shoulder. When it was all over, the rolls of pleasure, the aftershocks, the tingling washing across her skin, Sid rolled over onto her back. “Fuck,” she said one last time, for good measure.

“Good to know I still got it,” Gale said. Sid rolled her head over and found Gale smiling, looking smug as shit.

She was allowed, Sid decided. “It’s been a while,” she said again. Let Gale take that as she would.

After Sid had recovered a little, she got to the business of getting Gale off. She needed a little more direction than Gale had; however long ago this had been for Gale, Sid suspected she’d probably still done more than Sid’s handful of college experiments. 

She’d forgotten what it was like, having another woman hot and slick and ready around her fingers. Gale gasped and squirmed against her, naked and disarmed, and Sid felt that strange tenderness again, though surely that one glass of wine had worn off long ago. She pressed a kiss in the valley between Gale’s breasts, and she set about bringing her home.

The helpless gasp Gale made when she came was pretty damn satisfying.

Afterwards, they crawled under the covers. It was better than putting clothes back on or thinking about anything else that had happened in the past two days. Sid listened to Gale breathe. The air smelled of arousal, and between Sid’s thighs, her underwear was damp.

After awhile, Gale asked, “What happened to my notebook?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Huh.”

Voices passed outside, a reminder that there still was a world out there—one with Billy Loomis in it again, and his mom, and that kid Mickey that Sid had never been sure she’d even met until that night on the stage. Surely Roman Bridger was right around the corner, or Stu. Sid wasn’t sure which one would be worse. 

Actually, there were better things she could do with her time than rank her personal file of Serial Killers I Have Known. She reached across for Gale’s uninjured hand, tugged it close, and kissed the inside of her wrist. Gale watched, her expression unreadable. 

Sid sat up. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Even after everything, it still wasn’t that late when Sid came back out. There was still a little bit of daylight left. Gale got up to take a shower of her own. Sid watched her go. Sex-mussed, and she was _still_ gorgeous. 

Sid got dressed again. Feeling aimless, she took her ice bucket and went out to see about a refill. Maybe Gale would want to ice her wrist again. She was at the ice machine when a distressed feminine voice floated to her from down the hall. “He _stabbed_ me,” the girl said.

For a moment, it was like Sid’s whole body had locked up. She took a shallow breath, because that was all the tightness in her chest would allow, then another, deeper one, and then she straightened up and followed the voice.

It was coming from another guest’s room. The door was open, and Sid peeked around the corner. The girl was just a teenager, probably still in high school. She was holding her arms around herself, her face a mess of tears and smeared eyeliner. 

Sid ducked back into the hallway and out of sight before any of the adults in the room noticed her. One she recognized as the manager of the lodge. The woman was maybe the girl’s mother. “He was _right there_ ,” the girl said, her voice shaky. “And he had this big freaking knife, and he stabbed me right in my chest.”

“But sweetheart, he didn’t.” That was the woman. “There’s no blood, see?”

“I don’t _care_ , it _hurt_ , and he had these crazy eyes.” The girl sniffed loudly. “It was awful.”

“It was a trick knife, probably,” the manager said. “One of those movie props. Can you tell us what he looked like?”

The girl’s description matched Billy to a T, right down the clothes Sid had seen him in the night before. 

“And where did he go?”

“I—I didn’t see. I was crying, and it hurt, and then he was just gone.”

Sid had heard enough. She went back to her and Gale’s room, closed the door, and said, “Gale, we have to go.”

“What?” Gale was fresh out of the shower, sitting on the bed in her bathrobe.

“He attacked someone,” Sid said. Her throat was tight. “Billy went into some girl’s room down the hall and stabbed her.”

“Oh my god. Is she dead?”

“No, I don’t—it sounds like she’s fine? I guess ghost knives can’t kill you. She said it hurt, though. And she’s really scared.” Sid’s chest ached, and her eyes were hot with threatening tears. “She’s just a kid, Gale. He’s doing it all over again. He’s terrorizing me by—by hurting other people. He’s only here because I’m here. We have to go before something really bad happens.”

Gale was silent for a long moment. At last she said, “You’re right. Let’s get packed up.” She headed to the wardrobe and started pulling out dresses and jackets. Gale was scared, too. Sid could see it in the tension around her mouth. That made everything worse somehow.

The last time Sid had packed with this much haste, it had been at college when the police security had wanted to take her and Hallie to a safe house. Look how well that had turned out. Maybe that was why there was a lump in her throat now, or maybe she was just really, really tired. She’d come here for a change of scenery, and yet what she got were the same old sights.

The last of the daylight was fading, leaving only a thin, pale wash of light to the west. Never mind that Debbie Loomis and minion had appeared in broad daylight today, that Billy’s ghost had attacked that girl while the sun still hung above the horizon; in Sid’s world, night was when the worst always came, and she’d never been able to outrun it. Part of her, her gut instinct and her thudding heart, was sure she wouldn’t be able to now, either. She kept expecting Billy to appear at her elbow, taunting her, for Stu to jump out from behind something to make one of those awful faces he loved. If he actually did, Sid thought she might piss herself.

As it was, she jumped half out of her skin when someone knocked at the door. It wasn’t even a loud knock. Gale held her handbag tight with both hands and said, “You get it.”

“Thanks a lot,” Sid said, but she went. She stood behind the door as she unlatched it, swung it open a few inches, and peeked around the other side. 

It was the elderly man from the sauna, the one who’d been cranky about her camera. Now he was dressed, his thinning hair combed over the top of his head, his clothes the kind Sid remembered her grandpa had worn when he was alive. The man lifted his white, whiskery eyebrows above the tortoiseshell rims of his glasses and said, “May I come in?”

Wordlessly, Sid stepped aside and let him in. He sat in the chair by the desk, folded his hands, and said, “I understand you’re the reason a young lady down the hall saw a ghost.”

“Sorry,” Gale said, “but who the fuck are you?”

“I thought you looked familiar,” he told Sid. “All those murders in that little burg down south. Woods Creek, was it?”

“Woodsboro,” Sid said.

He nodded soberly. “And then you came here, where the veil is so thin, looking for ghosts. I overheard you asking the young man at reception about it. Didn’t it even cross your mind what ghosts might find you?”

“Now just a minute—” Gale began.

“We’re leaving,” Sid said. She gestured towards the suitcases. “They won’t bother anyone anymore.”

The man’s eyebrows rose a little higher. “Well, you’re wrong there. Now that they’re here, they’ll stick around until you banish them yourself.”

Sid stared at him, disappointment tight in her throat. “You mean Billy could just keep on terrorizing people? Even after we’re gone?”

“How do you know?” Gale asked. Her eyes were narrowed, her arms crossed. Sid remembered a distant thought, as if from a very long time ago: it was no bad thing to have Gale on her side. 

“Young lady, I’ve been coming around here for a very long time. I know the ways of this place. A lot of people, they just need a little visit for their health, like they used to do with those old hot springs up the way, you know. Say a last goodbye, find out where the old man kept the key to the toolshed. That’s all a ghost is, really. Just a memory you can’t let go of, for whatever reason. Once you do…” He made a shooing motion.

He turned to Sid. There was sympathy in his eyes that she didn’t want. “Now, I understand that reason you can’t let go might be a good one, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got a mess here, and you’ll have to clean it up.”

“How?” Sid asked.

“It’s like I said. You’ve got to stop holding on so tight.”

“Okay, but _how_?” Gale asked.

The man shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that. I heard one woman hung herself to get away from the spirit haunting her, and I guess that did the trick, but I wouldn’t recommend it. You two seem like resourceful young ladies, though. I expect you’ll figure something out.” He stood up, and Sid got the door for him. Out he went, ambling down the hall.

When the door was closed again, Sid and Gale looked at each other. “Well, fuck,” Gale said.

* * *

Gale had to go downstairs to get the password for the wifi. Sid opened her laptop for the first time since they’d arrived, and together they looked up banishing rituals. They were all pretty much bullshit. “Meteor dust? Who sells meteor dust?”

A little while later, “I think that only works if you’re Catholic.”

And after that, “This one happens at the conjunction of Jupiter and Mars and also this star—”

“Oh, the website with the little ghost cursor!” Gale said brightly, peering over Sid’s shoulder.

Sid heaved a sigh and pushed the laptop away from her. “Do you really think this is what he meant?”

“He’s a senile old man. I doubt even he knows what he meant.”

“God.” Sid covered her eyes with her hand.

“Hey,” Gale said sharply. Sid looked up and found Gale glaring at her. “We’re going to beat these assholes just like we did all the other times, all right?”

Sid gave her a watery smile. “Okay.”

“Now come on, we have all these pieces, let’s just—just put something together.”

“I’m not sure that’s how ghosts work,” Sid said, but Gale had already gotten out her notebook and started making a list, and just seeing it made Sid feel a little better.

They did manage to cobble something together. A lot of their problem was lack of supplies—even without worrying about meteor dust, they also lacked candles, crystals, herbs, and basically all other standard ingredients apparently used for banishing ghosts, summoning them, or summoning them and then banishing them. Gale sacrificed a stick of lipstick to make a circle and pentagram on the hardwood floor. Sid snuck into the lodge’s darkened dining room and grabbed votive candles off a few of the tables. They elected to skip all the symbols because, as Gale put it, it was hazardous enough getting something tattooed on yourself that you couldn’t read, much less putting it in a magic ritual.

Finally the banishing circle was finished, such as it was. Outside the circle, Gale and Sid sat cross-legged, opposite one another. Gale lit the three candles nearest her, and Sid lit the last two. As the last wick caught, were all the sounds from beyond the room suddenly muffled, or was that only Sid’s imagination? 

Gale held up the page of notes she’d made of a banishment ritual—sourced from a website that also sold crystals and dreamcatcher pendants—and made a face. “I can’t read this bullshit with a straight face. Here, you do it. You were a theater major, right?”

Sid wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything, but she took the page and skimmed it. It did seem pretty nonsensical, full of the kind of rhyme a fourth-grader would use. She began to read. She didn’t know what she expected to happen. What actually happened was: nothing. She got to the end of the page, and no candles blew out. Her ears didn’t pop. No goosebumps rose on her arms.

Gale shrugged. “Try again. Maybe it’s one of those repetition things.”

So Sid read it again, grateful now that the whole thing was only fifteen lines. Then she read it again. In the middle of the fifth try, a tennis shoe appeared in Sid’s vision and knocked one of the candles over. “Oops,” said Billy.

Sid scrambled backwards. There he was, as large as life if not quite as solid, squinting down at their circle. “Never figured you for one of those wiccan weirdos, Sid.”

“It’s for you,” Sid said.

He ignored her. “Gale Weathers,” he said, grinning like the night he’d died. God help her, Sid used to think that grin was _cute_. He dropped to a crouch just inches away from Gale, who looked like she wasn’t even breathing. He shifted his arm, and suddenly there was a knife in his hand. “I remember you. I think you shot at me.”

“I can do it again,” Gale said, jaw clenched.

“I don’t think so,” Billy said. He touched the knife to Gale’s chin. Gale flinched, which must mean she felt something, and if he could kick the candle over, then—

“Billy,” Sid said. “Leave her alone. If you want me, I’m right here.”

“How are you still alive?” Billy asked Gale, like Sid hadn’t said anything at all. “You’re the obnoxious bitch that dies at the beginning of the third act. You’re a horror staple.”

“I’ve lived through a lot of third acts by now, buster,” Gale said. Her eyes were so wide Sid could see the whites of them. “That’s more than I can say for you.”

“There’s still time,” Billy said. He scraped the blade of his knife across Gale’s chin, like he was giving her the closest of shaves. Once again Gale flinched, and Billy’s grin widened. Then he pushed to his feet, so Sid had to crane her neck to see him. “See you soon, Gale.” He tapped the tip of his knife against his cheekbone, pointed it her way, and took a step towards the window.

Then Sid blinked, and he wasn’t there anymore.

“Damn it,” Gale said. “Fuck.”

“So much for plan A,” Sid said. She righted the displaced candled, which had gone out when Billy kicked it over. At least the lodge wouldn’t be taking a scorch mark out of their deposit.

“Fuck,” Gale said again, with a new note in her voice. 

She had her face in her hands.

“Gale?” 

Gale shook her head and didn’t answer.

Sid crawled around the circle and squeezed Gale’s shoulder. She was shaking, Sid realized. “Gale. Hey.” Sid gently tugged one of Gale’s hands away. Underneath, she was crying. “Hey,” Sid said again, softer. She scooted closer, put her arm around Gale’s shoulders, and pulled her in.

“I’m fine,” Gale said, her voice cracking, but she didn’t move. Sid kept on holding her, feeling her breath hitch. She was warm in Sid’s arms, and she still smelled of that floral body wash.

After a while, when her breathing had started to steady, she said, “I specifically wanted to get _away_ from people threatening me with knives.”

“You picked the wrong haunted lodge, I guess.”

Gale’s bark of laughter sounded a little congested, but Sid was glad to hear it. Gale shifted away at last, and Sid let her go. “I’m gonna go—” Gale gestured towards her nose, and then she rose and went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

Sid surveyed their banishing circle. She wondered if there was such a thing as a functional ritual for banishing ghosts, and they’d just screwed it up with their mishmash of substitutions, or if every part of it was bullshit. Since Sid had no way of figuring out the answer to that, she went ahead and started cleaning it up.

Gale came out of the bathroom eventually. Her eyes were red, and she’d cleaned off all her mascara and runny eyeliner. “Well, that was embarrassing,” she said, not looking Sid in the eye. 

Sid went and sat on the bed. “Gale,” she said. After a moment’s hesitation, Gale joined her. “So,” Sid said, “do you think these could be your ghosts, instead of mine?”

“I’m just the reporter,” Gale said immediately, like she’d already considered this and marshalled arguments against it. “I’m just collateral damage. You’re the one all the psycho killers are obsessed with.”

Conspicuously, that wasn’t a no. “It’s not about who they’re obsessed with. Not anymore, not here. It’s about who’s obsessed with them.”

Gale snorted. “I don’t give a shit about any of them.”

“You said you were getting out of true crime altogether because of them—Roman and Billy and Stu and Mrs. Loomis. You didn’t want anyone shooting at you anymore, remember? But here—you’re the one they’re interested in. Billy keeps forgetting I exist. Mrs. Loomis didn’t even look at me.” As gently as she knew how, Sid said, “I think you brought them, Gale.”

“What, like you’re so fucking well-adjusted?”

Sid looked away.

“Sorry,” Gale said. “That wasn’t—sorry.”

“I’m writing a book,” Sid said quietly.

“A book,” Gale echoed warily. “What kind of book?”

This wasn’t how Sid had planned to tell anyone. “Just, like, the story of my life. What I’ve been through. Processing, I guess. It was my therapist’s idea at first. It kind of helps to write it down, you know? I mean, I guess you do know. You wrote all those books about the murders.”

“That’s not really why I wrote them,” Gale said wryly. “It was more for the fame and money.” 

She was funny. No one ever seemed to recognize that about her.

“Anyway,” Sid said, “I thought maybe I could use it to help other people. Like, I went through all this crap, and I’m okay, so maybe they can be, too. I dunno. Maybe that’s dumb. What I’m saying is, I’ve been working on this stuff for a while. Ever since all the crap in LA, I just—when I realized I couldn’t hide, that meant I had to do something else.”

“My god, you _are_ well-adjusted,” Gale said.

“I meant what I said. Billy _isn’t_ special, and I _am_ over him. Mostly.” And Sid had ghosts to prove it. Or she failed to have ghosts. One of those. Either way, it felt good to know all that processing and therapy had done some good.

“Well, I don’t know where that leaves me,” Gale said. She shut her eyes and let her head fall back against the headboard. “Fuck.”

Sid crawled up next to her and pressed their shoulders together. “Do you think about them a lot?”

“Not since I finished the book on them,” Gale said.

Sid had poked her nose into Gale’s book on the Roman Bridger murders. There wasn’t a lot of Gale in it, and what there was, wasn’t really recognizable. That Gale was intrepid, invincible. She never made mistakes.

Sid asked, “Which one was the worst?”

“Debbie Salt,” Gale said promptly. “Or Loomis, whatever. Slimy little groupie, always hanging around and fucking with me. There was that whole cat-and-mouse business, the projector room, thinking I was watching Dewey die. And then she pulled that gun on me and marched me into that auditorium.” Gale shivered. Sid didn’t think it was all for effect. “Here I thought I was going to get shot, and then the look on your face when you thought I was the killer—you looked like I’d broken your heart. We weren’t even friends then, really.”

“No, but I thought you had _some_ standards. Killing people just so you could report on the murders would be low even for you.”

“Shit, why didn’t I think of that?”

Sid shoved at Gale’s shoulder. Sobering, she said, “I saw your face, too, you know. You were pretty freaked.” 

Gale heaved a sigh. “Is that what you want me to say? I was scared? Yeah, Sidney. I was scared shitless. Every time.”

It was a big admission. Sid had been in enough tight situations with her to know. “You hide it pretty well usually.”

“I’m an investigative journalist. You don’t get far if you freak out over every little thing.”

“You’re Gale Weathers, always on the story,” Sid said, which felt like it was a quote from somewhere. A lifetime ago, she remembered Dewey sometimes having Top Story on when Sid went over to the Rileys’ to visit Tatum. She must have picked up some things by osmosis.

“Damn straight.” 

Sid threaded her fingers through Gale’s. Gale took another shaky breath. Sid said, “Maybe—maybe you just have to show them you’re not afraid.”

“But I am, Sidney,” Gale said impatiently.

“Sure, but…” Sid didn’t know if she was having a bright idea, or if it was just really late at the end of a really freaking long day. “But what if you convinced them you weren’t? What if you can bullshit a ghost, too? And then—then maybe it’d be true.”

“Fake it ‘til you make it,” Gales said thoughtfully. “Do ghosts work like that?”

Sid looked at the remains of their banishing circle. They still needed to wipe the lipstick off the floor. “Beats me.”

* * *

As a plan, it was maybe even stupider than their last plan, but at least Sid didn’t have to read any bad poetry. She thought maybe it’d done Gale some good, too, to talk everything out. Sid hadn’t realized just how twitchy Gale had been before.

There was still a question of when and where this big ghost showdown would happen. They agreed that just sitting around waiting for ghosts to appear one by one was not ideal, but they figured their chances of successfully summoning a ghost were about as good as their chances of banishing one had been. “Unless we did a summoning ritual and one of them showed up just to be an asshole,” Sid added, in the middle of putting her pile of shirts back in the chest of drawers. 

“I have a different idea,” Gale said.

“Mm?”

Gale came closer. Her hand settled on Sid’s shoulder, and her thumb brushed up and down Sid’s neck.

“Oh, yeah?” Sid said, laughing.

“We could give them something to interrupt,” Gale said. She didn’t move her hand. “They all seem to like dramatic entrances.”

Sid turned, not laughing anymore. Her pulse had quickened, and it wasn’t from the promise of a makeout session. “You know, usually the people I’m with end up dead. Especially when there are serial killers around.” Granted, one of them had _been_ a serial killer, but the point stood.

Gale lifted her chin. “Like I said, I’ve survived a lot of third acts.”

“Yeah. We’re pretty good at that.”

“Yeah, we are,” Gale said, entirely seriously. Her gaze on Sid was heavy. There was something a little intoxicating about it, Gale giving Sid her full attention—no angle. No story.

Sid kissed her. 

She’d thought maybe she’d have gotten this out her system the first time, an attraction kindled quickly and burned out just as fast, but if anything this was even better. She knew how Gale liked to kiss now. She’d seen Gale naked and knew what there was to look forward to. She’d heard Gale admit her fears, and she’d told Gale about her book. 

Feeling full of tenderness, Sid cupped the back of Gale’s neck and pulled them closer. They shifted together, pressed close enough that part of Sid’s weight was on Gale, and part of Gale’s weight was on her. Gale palmed Sid’s ass. Sid responded by slotting a leg between Gale’s and grinding up against her hip bone. “Fuck,” Gale said softly.

“That is what it looks like, yeah,” said a voice.

Sid and Gale broke violently apart. 

Of course it was Billy, watching them both eyebrows rose. “I guess you warmed up a bit, Sid, since you gave it up to me. And god, with her? What are you now, a lesbo?”

“I’m not who you’re here for,” Sid said.

Maybe he even heard her. He cocked his head. “Gale Weathers. God, you were really annoying.”

“That seems to be the theme of the day,” Gale said tartly. “Seems like I made a bigger impression on you than you did on me.”

Billy put his hand to his heart in mock surprise. “I’m hurt, Gale. Did you or did you not write a whole book about me? Of course that’s before you knew it was me.”

“I wrote another one after I found out, actually,” Gale said. “And then I wrote two more about other, more interesting serial killers, because Sid’s right. You aren’t special.”

“Hey,” Billy said, starting to look pissed off. “Me and Stu were the fucking originals. We terrorized that whole fucking town.” His knife was suddenly in his hand. He advanced on Gale; this time, she stood her ground. “And you helped us do it, bitch. You gave us all that publicity.”

“And then I helped put you down,” Gale said, baring her teeth. She was still scared, but she was dealing with it by being pissed off. That was the Gale that Sid knew. “That’s why I’m alive, and all you can do is wave a ghost knife in my face.”

Billy’s face contorted with fury. “You wanna find out just what my ghost knife can do?” Without warning he plunged the blade into Gale’s gut.

“No!” Sid cried.

For just a moment, Gale curled around the blade, clearly in pain. Then she straightened up. She was breathing hard, her face full of grim determination. “Seems like you can’t quite the finish the job. Maybe some dysfunction?”

“Fuck off,” Billy said, staring at her, wild-eyed. 

“ _You_ fuck off,” Gale said, stepping directly into his space.

“You leave my Billy alone,” came a new voice, and yep, there was Debbie Loomis, gun shaking in her hand. Mickey hung back by the door like her psychotic shadow, grinning in a way that would have told anyone he had a few screws loose. Sid should have known as soon as he showed up that these weren’t her ghosts; when had she ever given a shit about Mickey?

“I’ve had enough of you,” Debbie told Gale. “And you, too,” she added, noticing Sid for just a second before visibly forgetting her again. She advanced on Gale. “You wrote all those terrible things about my Billy.”

With a feral glee, Gale looked down the barrel of that gun and said, “And every one of them was true.”

Debbie screamed with rage. Then suddenly it was Gale lifting a pistol Sid had never seen, Gale raising it and firing at Debbie Loomis’s ghostly forehead, a point-blank shot. Debbie crumpled to the floor just like she had five years ago on the stage of the Windsor University auditorium. Gale swung her pistol to Billy Loomis, who was already starting to look a little insubstantial. He put his hands up just as Gale fired. The bullet blew through him, scattering fragments of him like wisps of fog.

There was barely an outline of Debbie left. Mickey seemed to already be gone. Sid went to Gale’s side, and together they watched Debbie Loomis dissolve into the floor. 

“You shot a ghost in the face,” Sid said.

“Worth a try. I always wished I could have taken her out, instead of freaking Cotton Weary. What did Debbie Loomis ever mean to him?”

“I didn’t think you had a gun.”

“Hey, I told you I started going to a range. I just don’t keep my firearm under my _pillow_ like some kind of paranoid freak. No offense.”

Sid rolled her eyes, amused despite herself. She shrugged into Gale’s side until Gale put her arm around Sid’s shoulders. It was a good place to be. “Do you think that’s it?”

“I’m sure if it isn’t, that nice old man will come around to wag his finger at us some more.”

As if on cue, someone knocked insistently on their door. They were not nearly as polite about it as the old man. “I bet the management is here to ask why we just fired a weapon inside their lodge,” Sid said. Gale groaned. At least the walls here were solid logs; they could be sure the bullets hadn’t gone _too_ far.

* * *

It wasn’t as bad as Sid had been afraid it would. Gale had no trouble selling them on the story that the troublemaker kid had snuck into their room—the kid who’d threatened the girl down the hall. It even had the benefit of being true, except for how Billy hadn’t left via the door.

When the manager and security guy had finally left, it was after midnight. “God,” Gale said, slumping onto the bed.

“Hey, what about the knife?” Sid said. She’d thought of it after the manager had shown up, and by then of course she couldn’t ask. 

Gale shrugged. “It hurt, like a—like an ache. Like someone was slicing me open with a shard of ice. I don’t think it did any damage, though.” 

Sid carefully rolled the hem of Gale’s shirt up. There was no blood or open wound, but where Billy had stabbed her, there was a thin line. It was a harsh red color. It looked swollen, and when Sid brushed her fingers over it, it was hot to the touch. “Well, it doesn’t look like someone just stabbed you.” She let the hem drop. “For a minute there, I thought he really had.” She wondered if maybe it would have been a real knife, if Gale hadn’t already shaken his confidence. She pressed her thigh a little more firmly against Gale’s, just to be sure she was there.

“Hey,” Gale said.

Sid looked over, and Gale threaded her fingers through Sid’s hair and tugged her close.

It wasn’t a passionate kiss. Maybe it would have been half an hour ago, immeidately post-ghostbusting, but now Sid was pretty sure they were both wiped. Now it was a kiss of comfort, of hey-we-survived. When it was over, Sid pressed her forehead to Gale’s. “To us,” Sid said.

Softly, Gale said, “To us.”

* * *

Sid didn’t wake out of a dream. The western sky was still pitch black, although the glowing numerals of the bedside clock said it near dawn. Beside her, Gale’s breath was soft and even.

Sid didn’t know why she was awake, and she wasn’t sure what impulse made her slip out of bed, into that ever-useful robe, and out the door, room key conscientiously pocketed this time. The hall was still lit, but not even the janitor was stirring now. She followed her instincts down to the lounge. The coffee urn was still there, and next to it the hot water urn. Sid poured herself a cup of the water and dunked a tea bag in it. 

When she turned, there was a shadowy figure sitting in one of those burnt-orange chairs. It was her mom. “Hi, honey,” Maureen Prescott said.

Carefully Sid made her way to the next chair over. By the time she sat down, her eyes were already wet. “I looked for you.”

“I know. I wanted to come earlier, but it was like LAX around here.” She smiled at her own joke, like she’d always done. When Sid was fifteen, it had really annoyed her, because everything about her parents had annoyed her when she was fifteen. 

Now a tear dripped down her cheek. “It’s been really hard since you’ve been gone. You—you left kind of a mess.”

“I’m so sorry, Sidney.”

“Why, Mom? Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this, or Dad? Why all the secrets? And—god, why did you sleep with _Cotton Weary_?”

Maureen grimaced. “Not one of my better moments.” She reached across and folded her hands around Sid’s. In that moment Sid could have sworn she could feel them, right down to the wedding ring Maureen had died wearing. Maureen smiled sweetly. “You grew up so beautiful.”

“Mom,” Sid said. Her voice cracked.

“I love you so much, honey.” Maureen leaned forward and brushed her lips over Sid’s forehead. It felt like a chill on Sid’s skin. Then she was gone.

“Fuck,” Sid said, crying. “That’s not fair! Mom!”

Her mom did not come back. Sid went and got napkins to blow her nose in. She cupped her mug of tea in her hands, and she sipped from it slowly enough that it was cold by the time she reached the bottom.

Someone moved at the lounge doorway. Sid had an instant of _Oh god what now_ , but then she realized it was the little old man. He didn’t look surprised to see her. He poured some tea water of his own, and he came to sit in a nearby chair with a view of the lightening sky.

“I saw my mom,” Sid said. The man hummed thoughtfully, as if this was a normal confession to make to a stranger at dawn. “She died a few years ago. We talked, but it was so short, and then she—she left.”

“I’m told they do that,” the man said. “I wouldn’t know, myself.”

Acting on an instant’s intuition, Sid reached across the space between them and gripped his hand. It was a warm, human hand. She jerked her own away again. “Sorry.”

He didn’t seem bothered. “No, no, I’m not one of them. My Ella is, though.” 

“Oh?” Sid said.

His gaze was distant, looking at some memory Sid couldn’t see. “Been coming around here for twenty-three years. She gets fainter all the time. One of these days, I’m going to forget what she looks like. That’ll be end of it, I guess. But not you, young lady,” he said focusing on Sid again. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Don’t you go hanging on like I have.”

He closed his eyes. The conversation was over. 

Sid’s eyes ached from crying, she needed to pee, and suddenly it was hitting her just how little sleep she’d gotten. She set the empty mug in the dirty-mug rack, and she made her way back up to the suite.

Gale stirred when Sid came out of the bathroom. “Where’ve you been?” she mumbled, clearly still mostly asleep.

“Just getting some air,” Sid said. She looked at the line of Gale’s body under the covers, thought _fuck it_ , and crawled in behind her. She scooted in close and put her arm over Gale’s waist. Gale hummed softly. Sid closed her eyes.

She didn’t dream.

* * *

When they both finally woke up, Gale didn’t say anything about Sid’s nocturnal wanderings. Maybe she didn’t remember. Anyway, Sid was going to keep her encounter with her mom to herself for a little while. She wondered what it meant, that all she’d needed in order to let her mom go was to hear her say that she loved her.

Instead, at lunch (because they’d missed breakfast again), Gale said, “So now what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t have a story, and we’re hopefully done with serial killer ghosts, so—what do you want to do?”

“You’re asking me?” Sid said, startled.

Gale shrugged. “The way I see it, we could just leave now. I’m not going to get a refund—although maybe if I worked the ‘I had to leave after a hoodlum broke into my bedroom’ angle…” She paused, looking thoughtful. “Anyway, we could just leave.”

“Or?”

“Or not. We’ve got the room for three more days, we haven’t even set foot in either the sauna or the hot tub, and someone told me there’s hiking.”

“You hate hiking,” Sid said automatically.

“Maybe I could be persuaded otherwise if, you know, there weren’t ghosts trying to throw me off cliffs. And if the company was good.” She eyed Sid meaningfully.

“Yeah?” Sid’s chest felt strangely warm. She was smiling, completely without meaning to. Three days of hot tub and hiking and, she was pretty sure, some of those other things people generally did when they booked honeymoon suites. Sid could live with that.


End file.
